Has Technology Made us Lazy and Dependent?

Has Technology Made us Lazy and Dependent?

How many of us could go a week without our cell phone? Do you even bother to memorize phone numbers anymore? I can’t even recall the last time I went a day without looking at the internet at all. Technology has made life so convenient for us that it’s almost scary to think of what would happen if we had to go without our favorite gadget for an extended period of time. We have to face facts: Technology has made us lazy.

No need to leave the house for entertainment

What’s the point of getting up, taking a shower, getting dressed, and driving to the movies when you can just sit on the couch and fire up Netflix? We’ve all been there before. You’re on the fence about whether or not you want to get out and do something, but then something comes over you. You start looking around at your PS3 and laptop, then realize you can have just as much fun staying in the house.

To make things worse, Nintendo and Microsoft had to go ahead and release the Wii and Kinect (respectively). Thanks to these two addictive gadgets, you can go bowling, play tennis, or participate in the Olympic Games in your living room.

Is it even possible to get lost anymore?

I get the feeling that we’re getting closer and closer to the day when people won’t even be able to read paper maps anymore. There are already a good deal of young adults that have no idea how to navigate through their own cities without using a GPS.

The beginning of the demise of paper maps was MapQuest. Being able to print out complete turn by turn directions for where you need to go pretty much killed the need for a map. But even with MapQuest, some people still kept a map in their cars just in case of emergencies.

Once TomTom and Garmin hit the scene, paper maps became obsolete. Even MapQuest is getting used a lot less frequently thanks to GPS apps. You can use Google Maps on your smart phone and get voice guided turn by turn directions for free. Even people with no sense of direction can get to where they need to be with today’s technology.

Oh yea, and now Apple is getting involved in the GPS industry so the future of paper maps isn’t looking too bright. Soon, Boys Scouts will be teaching kids how to use a GPS instead of how to navigate with a compass.

Find the answer to anything with Google

We have all Googled something that we were completely embarrassed we didn’t know the answer to. According to Google, “How to tie a tie” gets over 500,000 searches a month. For some reason, over 1,000 people are searching “how to boil water” and “how to boil eggs” gets over 40,000 searches per month.

Google has made the process of learning how to do things extremely easy. There was once a time when if you didn’t know how to do something, you had to either:

Know someone that knew how to do it

Try to figure it out and mess up until you got it right

Not anymore. A quick search on Google will bring up instructional YouTube videos, blog posts, and PDF’s that show you how to do anything. So much for being self sufficient.

So long errands!

Running errands use to take up entire Saturday mornings. By the time you got home, you were drained and just wanted to relax. Well thanks to online shopping and services like Peapod, running your own errands is a thing of the past. Giant’s Peapod service lets you get groceries delivered right to your home. TaskRabit lets you find people that will literally do any type of errand you need from returning merchandise to putting together Ikea furniture.

These services are great for people that are physically unable to do certain tasks themselves, but there are plenty of able-bodied people using them too just for the convenience. Buying clothes, electronics, and other goodies once required leaving the house. Not anymore. The E-Commerce industry is doing extremely well and is expected to increase 62% by 2016. I’m definitely part of the problem here because I love online shopping. But I can admit that it has made me somewhat lazy.

It seems as though with every new piece of technology that gets released, we get lazier and lazier. Hopefully we don’t get to the point that we become like the people in the movie Wall-E. If you’re the type of person that won’t change the channel because you can’t find the remote, or would rather Skype then drive to visit friends/family, technology could be making you lazy.